No Real Ending
by thestylus01
Summary: It's hard to picture Janeway in one place, even in the Alpha Quadrant. Getting home brings its own challenges.


No Real Ending

by the stylus

_I want you to see this before I leave:  
the experience of repetition as death...  
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.  
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever._

_--Adrienne Rich, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"_

* * *

She has forgotten what other fabrics feel like. It has been a long time since she has worn anything except the layers of 'Fleet clothing which broaden her shoulders, straighten her spine, smooth out the curve of hip, breast, throat. But at 3 a.m., in rooms not her own, she has quietly replicated this dress again and these boots. The salty air is tacky on her bare arms, heavy in her hair; and she hears each step outlined precisely as the thin heels carry her down the empty streets.

In the apartment she has left, Chakotay sleeps woodenly, his big body sprawled solidly across the mattress. She briefly wonders if she has ever slept that heavily but discards the thought before it comes to completion. He stirred slightly when she rose, crawling out from under the protective arm he had draped across her belly and laying the sheets lightly back over him. After four nights of her restlessness, she thinks he is becoming accustomed to it, inured to her nighttime motions.

The first night, he had woken completely, tousled and blinking, even though she hadn't turned on any lights. He had seemed still dazed, not quite un-asleep. She had told him she couldn't sleep, which was not a lie.

"What are you doing?"

"Going for a walk."

"Want company?"

"No," she had said gently, laying a splayed hand on his bare chest and pushing lightly. "Sleep. I'll be fine. You know me; sometimes I can't sleep, even when I'm tired." And she had laughed softly, self-deprecatingly, to illustrate her rueful honesty. He had kissed her and let her go.

She thinks now about what she didn't say, exactly. Which is: when we are both asleep in that bed, you with your certainty and I under your arm, I cannot breathe. The sound of your breath in my ears drives me to distraction. You are too warm: I cannot even lie near you without something hard forming in me from the heat and the scent and the presence of you.

So she has worn the sleeveless black dress on a September night in San Francisco that is only just too cold for a sleeveless dress. She is wearing the thigh-high leather boots because part of her knows they make him uncomfortable; he prefers her in flats, or strappy heels if she is out of uniform. And when she looks up, she is at the quay, leaning forward onto the rail, and the sea is pounding on the rocks below and it sounds nothing like Chakotay breathing.

She has missed the sea. They have been home almost two years now and she has spent perhaps twelve weeks on Earth, including the brief time before her court martial in a very nice apartment that was also a cell. She has visited her mother and seen her sister's brood of loud, rough-and-tumble children, who were slightly awed by this fictional character come to life. There were two weeks with Chakotay on Risa, just after the family visits and the official functions, when everything was new and bright. But they have separate apartments here; she insisted. And they gave her a new starship: sleeker, faster, without the nuisance of the gel packs, and with weapons upgrades that would have made the Delta Quadrant less perilous. They are, after all, at war.

It is a messy war, filled with politics and deals and the sort of things that make her hands feel dirty. But she is very good at it. When it doesn't cost so much, when every crewman is not also a surrogate son or daughter, she has found that she is a good battle commander. Remarkable, even. The analytical skills she honed in her science career have allowed her to pick the enemy apart with the precision of a laser scalpel; and her time in the Delta Quadrant has made her much more devious. On several occasions she has thanked the luck that watches over starship captains for those long, tedious years of constant negotiations, of infighting and mutiny prevention, of dealing and double-dealing. She was made ready for this.

Two of her missions have been short-term deep cover. She finds that she likes that feeling, of being thrown into the field with a history she learns on the transport, a name she has to remind herself to answer to, and only a last-resort means of contacting anyone familiar. Most nights, it is not as lonely as waking up next to a still-sleeping Chakotay.

"Hello there." The voice startles her, and she thinks for a moment it is just a trick of the waves on the shore, until she feels someone behind her. Idly, she wonders when she learned to sense strangers with the hackles on her neck, like a wild animal. She turns.

"Hello." It is a man, a tall, graceful humanoid with the markings of a Trill dappling his face and a shock of white hair. He is dressed in a long, dark cloak which sweeps down from his shoulders and brushes the tops of his dark shoes. He smiles at her and she braces her arms against the railing, wary.

"It's a nice night."

"Yes." She gives him nothing, still slightly off-kilter at having found someone else here at this hour.

"I'm Brel." He holds out his hand. It is just a handshake.

"KJ." Which is true, in a way, and not. He must have seen her on the newsfeeds when Voyager came home. Everyone else in this godforsaken quadrant did. It's why she's been a Romulan, then a Cardassian in the last six months. Or perhaps he didn't. That, she thinks, would be nice.

He moves to stand next to her at the rail, facing outward, not so close that it is uncomfortable or threatening. Just close enough that she can feel the heat of his long body. "It's going to storm tomorrow." He gestures at the sea. "Can you feel it?"

And then she can, just like that. She nods and turns, watching the sea.

"I know who you are," he says, a moment or an hour later. She is deflated as though something has gone out of her with the loss of this quiet charade; and then she is relieved. "I've seen you...around. We do the same kind of work, you and I."

She glances over at him, studying the line of his profile in the thick light of the distant streetlight and the moon through the haze, trying to match his face with a face she has seen somewhere, in some corridor or around a corner. Trying to remember the people who don't quite exist in the building that has no name. Yes, she thinks. Perhaps. It is her new work he is referring to, the kind that would have once kept her awake nights, the way being home now keeps her awake. Feeling suddenly both old and brave, she asks, "Would you like to get a drink?"

And he shakes his head: "I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Coffee," she amends. He inclines his head with a small smile and they move off down the street, together but not touching. The small, dark bar that is open all night is quiet at this hour, but she remembers the correct alley and they find themselves inside where it smells like ale and tobacco and other things you aren't supposed to be able to get or need on Earth in this century. She is amused to think how much Chakotay would hate this place.

They are causing a bit of a scene among the scattered customers, but at least it isn't because either one of them is in uniform. Brel is striking: his hair bright against the dark, flowing clothing. And it has been a long time since she has been able to appreciate the heads she turns; too long since she walked in her own skin the way she walks in these boots, a stalk that is all hip and thigh. Mostly, this walk has gotten her into bases and out of camps, lately. Bars have been for information only.

In the end, they both drink whiskey, neat. And they tell stories about people they have never met. Legends, tall tales, long jokes with sucker punch lines. Later, when they switch to coffee, there are stories about people they did know, or know of. People die in these stories, or disappear, and they tell other stories after them because these have no real ending. Brel is witty and charming; from the looks that they are getting from the other patrons in the bar, she deduces that the tension between them is palpable, as is their comfort with it. At one point she begins to tell a story about K'rell and her seduction of an opposing general for information until, with a start, she realizes that she is telling her own story, from her last mission but one and comes to an abrupt halt. Brel is not disturbed by this but picks up the conversation smoothly. When he stumbles over a name, later, she does not ignore it; but there is not accusation in her eyes when she looks at him levelly, allowing him a moment to unhitch his voice and go on. It is good, she thinks, to remember that these stories are not make-believe and do not have fairy godmothers in them. It keeps them humble and aware.

Sometime after sunrise they emerge, blinking, onto the narrow street. As he moves to walk back to the main street, she unconsciously reaches a hand out to touch his arm. And then, he is on her. Her back is pinned to the stone wall by the weight of his body and each jut of the stone comes through the thin fabric; her hands are trapped above her head by his large hands. They are kissing each other as though they want to devour each other; as if he wants to climb out of his own skin and into her; as if she wants to consume him whole. One of her legs moves between his and she feels him move slightly against her, feels the hard length of him shift against her thigh. And she is straining out against his hold, not really wanting to break it, but wanting him to feel the hardness of her nipples, the heat of her hips. He pushes back, understanding, rocking himself into her through the layers of fabric, against the grey stone walls of an alley that seem to rise forever.

As quickly as it has come, the thing crests and breaks. He pulls back, still holding her arms but stepping away from her body; she regains her footing without the support of his weight. Breathing hard, they stare at each other as he slowly lowers her hands. When he notices the red marks on her skin from the rough stone, he smiles wryly. She, too, smiles. Their clothes straightened, hair raked back with hasty fingers, he takes her elbow and leads her to the main street. Although it is a cloudy day, the sun is well over the horizon now, glinting dully on the water in front of them. It is going to storm later; she can smell the musk of the rain like sex in the thick air. With a nod, Brel moves right, in a direction she knows leads toward Headquarters. She goes left, thinking to return to Chakotay's apartment and then, instead, veering off toward the spartan quarters she keeps. She keeps moving along the edge of the water, the sea on her right, the waking city on her left.

She wonders if he ever worries, waking up without her there. Surely, these years later, he must have grown accustomed to it. She wonders if he regrets the desk job and the stationary life. If he ever regrets her. But she cannot help remembering the way he holds her in his sleep, like a boy holding his best toy so no one will take it from him. Something cold skitters down her spine. Even undercover she does not allow herself to stay the night with people. And she keeps up the half-lie that Starfleet has given her, because she cannot be bothered to construct anything better: that she is now facilitating difficult negotiations in regions where it is not prudent to communicate on official channels.

She tells herself that she does not want to lie to Chakotay, but that it is for his own safety that she does not tell him. Mostly, however, she knows that it is the way he looks at her sometimes, with that slight bit of worshipful awe lurking around the corner of his gaze. It is something of the look that Harry Kim had, his first day on Voyager nearly a decade ago. There is no space in that gaze for certain things, she thinks. Things that she cannot forget or regret and is not sure she would, even if she were able.

She tried to explain to Chakotay once what makes her uncomfortable. They were sitting on his balcony, wrapped in the ugly brown and orange quilt he has insisted on keeping from his quarters on Voyager. "You make me feel like glass," she had said. Trying to say: fragile, reflective, transparent. Like something to be cradled and shelved.

"Thank you," he had said, and then tightened the his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She hadn't had the energy to say anything else, but had just leaned back into him, watching the sun sneak up between the neighboring buildings. What it meant to him, she has no idea. She had tried again, once, but the timing and the expression on his face had dissuaded her.

She skirts the vendors, putting out their wares for the early shoppers. Several trawlers are moving back toward the wharves to unload a catch for the people who still buy fresh fish, and the gulls are loud overhead. In four blocks, she will be at her apartment and she will replicate a new uniform before she goes back to Chakotay's. In three days, she will be off-planet again, looking nothing like the woman from the bar. But she thinks she will keep the dress in her closet. For some other night.

Fin

* * *

All characters are the property of their creators. The author makes no profit from this work. 


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